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SPEECH 



HON. WILLIAM H. SEWARD, 



IMlViEDIATE ADMISSION OF KANSAS INTO THE UNION: 



\ 



DELIVERED 



IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES> APRIL 9, 1S56. 




WASHIMGTDN : 

MtNTED AT THE CONGRESSIONAL GLOBE OFP^lCE. 
1856. 



F^B^' 






ADMISSION OF KANSAS INTO THE UNION, 



The Senate, as in Commiueeof Uio Whole, having uiidef 
"Consideration the bill to uuthoiize the people of the T^^eiri- 
lory of Kansas to form a constitution ;ind State government, 
preparatory to their admission into the Union, Vihen they 
have the requisite populations- 
Mr. SEWARD said: Mrs President, to obtain 
empire is easy and common; to govern it well is 
difficult and rare indeed^ I salute the Congress 
of the United States in the exorcise of its most 
important function, that of extending the Federal 
Constitution over added domainvS.-) and I salute 
especially the Senate in the most august of all its 
manifold characters, itself a Congress of thirty- 
one free, equal, sovereign States, assembled lo 
decide whether the majestic and fraternal circle 
shall be opened to receive yet another free, equal, 
and sovereign State. 

The Constitution prescribes only two qualifica- 
tions for new States, namely — a substantial civil 
conimunity, and a republican government. Kan- 
sas has both of these. 

The circumstances of Kansas, and her relations 
towards the Union, are peculiar, anomalous, and 
deeply interesting. The United States acquired 
the province of Louisiana (which included the 
present Territory of Kansas) from France, in 
1803, by a treaty, in which they agreed that its 
inhabitants should be incorporated into the Fed- 
eral Union, and admitted as soon as possible, 
according to tlie principles of the Constitution, to 
the enjoyment ot all the rights, advantages, and 
immunities of citizens of the United States. 
Nevertheless, Kansas was, in 1820, assigned as 
a home for an indefinite period to several savage 
Indian tribes, and closed against immigration and 
all other than aboriginal civilization, but not 
without a cotemporaneous pledge to the Ameri- 
can people and to mankind , that neither slavery nor 
involuntary servitude should be tolerated therein 
forever. In 1854 Congress directed a removal 
of the Indian 'tribes, and organized and opened 
Kansas to civilization; but by the same act re- 
ecinded the pledge of perpetual dedication to free- 
dom, and substituted for it another, which de- 
clared that the [future] people of Kansas should 



be left pert'ectly free to establish or to exclude 
slavery, as they should decide through the action 
of a republican government which Congress 
modeled and authorized them to establish, under 
the protection of the United States. Notwith- 
standing this latter pledge, when the newly-asso- 
ciated people of Kansas, in 1855, were proceed- 
ing with the machinery of popular elections, in the 
manner prescribed by Congress, to choose legisla- 
tive bodies for the purpose of organizing that 
republican government, armed bands of invaders 
from the State of Missouri entered the Territory, 
seized the polls, overpowered or drove away the 
inhabitants, usurped 'he elective franchise, de- 
posited false and spurious ballots without regard 
to regularity of qualification or of numbers, pro- 
cured ofiicial certificates of the result by fraud 
and force, and thus created and constituted legis- 
lative bodies to act for and in the name of the 
people of the Territory. These legislative bodies 
afterwards assembled, assumed to be a legitimate 
Legislature, .set forth a code of municipal laws, 
created pu"blic offices, and filled them witli officers 
appointed for considerable periods by themselves, 
and thus established a complete and effective 
foreign tyranny over the people of the Territory. 
These high-handed transactions were consum- 
mated with the expressed purpose of establishing 
African slavery as a permanent institution within 
the Territory by force, in violation of the natural 
j rights of the people solemnly guarantied to them 
by the Congress of the United States. The Pres- 
1 ident of the United States has been an accessory 
' to these political transactions, with full complicity 
in regard to the purpose for which they were 
committed. He has adopted the usurpation, and 
made it his own, and he is now maintaining it 
with the military arm of the Republic. Thus 
Kansas has been revolutionized, and she now lies 
subjugated and prostrate at the foot of the Pres- 
ident of the United States; while he, through the 
agency of a foreign tyranny established within 
her borders, is forcibly introducing and establish- 
ing slavery there, in contempt and defiance of the 
organic law. These extraordinary transactions 



have been attended by civil commotions, in which 
property, lii'e, and liberty have been exposed to 
violence; and these cominotions still continue to* 
threaten, not only the Territory itself, but also 
the adjacent States, with the calamities and dis- 
asters of civil war, 

I am fully aware of the gravity of the charges 
against the President of the United States which 
this statement of the condition and relations of 
Kansas imports, I shall proceed, without fear 
and without reserve, to make them good. The 
maxim, that a sacred veil must be drawn over 
the beginning of all Governments, does not hold 
under our system. I shall first call the accuser 
into the presence of the Senate — then examine 
the defenses which the President has made — and, 
last, suljniit the evidences by which he is con- 
Ticted. ■' 

Tile people of Kansas know whether these 
charges are true or false. They have adopted 
theni, and, on tiie ground of the high political 
necessity which the wrongs they have endured, 
and are yet enduring, and the dangers through 
which they have already passed, and the perils to 
which they are yet exposed, have created, they 
have provisionally organized themselves as a State, 
and that State is now here, by its two chosen 
Senators and one Representative, standing out- 
side at the doors of Congress, applying to be ad- 
mitted into the Union, as a means of relief indis- 
pensable for the purposes of peace, freedom, and 
safety. This new State is the President's respons- 
ible afcnser. 

The President of the United States, without 
waiting for the appearance of his accuser at the 
Capitol, anticipated the accusations, and submit- 
ted his defenses against them to Congress. The 
first one of these defenses was contained in his 
annual message, which v/as communicated to 
Congress on the 30th of December, 1855. I 
examine it. You shall see at once that the Pres- 
ident's mind was oppressed — was full of some- 
thing too large and burdensome to be concealed, 
and yet too critical to be told. 

Mark, if you please, the state of the case at 
that time. So early as August, 1855, the peo- 
ple of Kansas had denounced the Legislature, 
They had at voluntary elections chosen Mr. A. H. 
Reeder to represent them in the present Congress, 
instead of J, W, Whitfield, who held a certificate 
of election under the authority of the Legislature. 
They had also, on the 23d day of October, 1855, 
by similar voluntary elections, constituted at 
Topeka an organic convention, which framed a 
constitution for the projected Slate. They had 
also, on the 15th of December, 1855, at snnilar 
voluntary elections, adopted that constitution, 
and its tenor was fully known. It provided for 
elections to be held throughout the new State on 
the 15th of January, 1856, to fill the offices 
created by it, and it also required the executive 
and legislative otficcrs, thus to be chosen, to 
assemble at Topeka on the 4th day of March, 
1856, to inaugurate the new State provisionally, 
and to take the necessary measures for the ap- 
pointment of Senators, who, together with a Rep- 
resentative already chosen, shouldsubmitthe con- 
stitution to Congress at an early day, and apply 
for the admission of the State of Kansas into the 
Union. All these proceedings had been based on 
tlie grounds that the territorial authorities of 



Kansas had been establi.'^hed by armed foreign 
usurpation, and were, nevertheless, sustained by 
the President of the United States. A constitu- 
tional obligation required the President " to give 
to Congress," in his annual message, " informa- 
tion of the state of the Union," Here is all " the 
information" which the President gave to Con- 
grpss concerning the events in Kansas, and its 
relations to the Union : 

" In the Territory of Kansas there have been acts preja- 
(iicial to good order, but as yet none liave occurred under 
circumstances to jiistify the interposition of the Federal. 
Executive. That could only be in case of obstruction to 
Federal law, oi- of organized resistance to territorial law, 
assuming the chararter of insurrection, which, if it should 
occur, it would be my dtity promptly to overcome and sup- 
press. I cherish ihe hope, however, that the occurrence of 
any such untoward event will bo prevented by the sound 
sense of the poopie of the Territory, wlio, by its organic 
law, possessing the right to deti^rmiiie their own domestic 
institutions, are entitled, while deporting themselves peace- 
fully, to the free exercise of that right, and must be pro- 
tected in the enjoyment of it, without interference on the 
part of the citizens of any of the Slates." 

This information implies, that no invasion, 
usurpation, or tyranny, -have been com)nittcd 
withm the Territory by strangers; and that tho 
provisional State organization now going forward 
IS not only unnecessary, but also prejudicial to 
good order, and insurrectionary. It menaces the 
people of Kansas with a threat, that the Presi- 
dent will "overcome and suppress" them. It 
mocks them with a promise, that, if they shall 
hereafter deport themselves properly, under the 
control of authorities by which they have been 
disfranchised, in determining institutions which 
have been already forcibly determined for then\ 
by foreign invasion, then they " must be protect- 
ed against interference by citizens of any of the 
States." 

The President, however, not content with a 
statement so obscure and unfair, devotes a third 
part of the annual message to argumentative spec- 
ulations bearing on the character of his accuser. 
Each State has two and no more Senators in the 
Senate of the United States. In determining the 
apportionment of Representatives in the House 
of Representatives, and in the electoral colleges 
among the States, three fifths of all the slaves in 
any State are enumerated. The slaveholding or 
non-slaveholding character of a State is determ- 
ined, not at the time of its admission into the 
Union as a State, but at that earlier period of its 
political life in which, being called a Territory, it 
is politically dependent on the United States, or 
on some foreign sovereign. Slavery is tolerated 
in some of the States, and forbidden in others. 
Affecting the industrial and the econonnica] sys- 
tems of the several States, as slavery and free- 
dom do, thii? diversity of practice concerning 
them early worked out a corresponding difference 
of conditions, interests, and ambitions, among 
the States, and divided and arrayed them into 
two classes. The balance of political power be- 
tween these two classes in the Federal system is 
sensibly affected by the accession of any new 
State to either of them. Each State, therefore, 
watches jealously the settlement, growth, and 
inchoate slaveholding and non-slaveholdiiig char- 
acters of Territories, v/hich may ujtimatcly come 
into the Union as States, It has resulted from 
these circumstances, that slavery, in relations 
purely political and absolutely Federal, is aa 



element which enters with more or less activity in to 
many niilional questions of finance, of revenue, 
of expenditure, of protection, of free trade, of 
patronage, of peace, of war, of annexation, of 
defense, and of conquest, and modifies opinions 
concerning; constructions of the Constitution, and 
the distribution of powers between the Union 
and the several States by which it is constituted. 
Slavery, under these political and Federal aspects 
alone, enters into the transactions in Kansas, with 
which the President and Congress are concerned. 
Nevertheless, he disingenuously alludes to those 
transactions in his defense, as if they were iden- 
tified with that moral discussion of slavery which 
he regards as odious and alarming, and without 
any other claim to consideration. Thus he alludes 
to the question before us as belonging to a "polit- 
ical agitation" "concerning a matter which con- 
sists to a great extent of exaggeration of inev- 
itable evils, or over-zeal in social improvement, 
or mere imagination of grievance, having but a 
remote connection with any of the constitutional 
functions of the Federal Government, and mena- 
cing the stability of the Constitution and the in- 
tegrity of the Union." 

In like manner, the Preisideiit assails and stig- 
matizes those who defend and maintain the cause 
of Kansas as " men of narrow views and sec- 
tional purposes," "engaged in those wild and 
chimerical schemes of social change which are 
generated one after another in the unstable minds 
of visionary sophists and interested agitators" — 
" mad men, rai.sing the storm of phrensy and fac- 
tion," "sectional agitators," "enemies of the Con- 
stitution, who have surrendered themselves so 
far to a fanatical devotion to the supposed inter- 
ests of the relatively few Africans in the United 
States, as totally to abandon and disregard the 
interests of the twenty-five millions of Americans, 
and trample under foot the injunctions of moral 
and constitutional obligation, and to, engage in 
plans of vindictive hostility against those who 
are associated with them in the enjoyment of the 
common heritage of our free institutions." Sir, 
the President's defense on this occa.sion, if not 
a matter sunply personal, is at least one of tem- 
porary and ephemeral importance. Possibly, all 
the advantages he will gain by transferring to his 
accuser a portion of the popular prejudice against 
abolition and Abolitionists can be spared to him. 
It would be wise, however, for those whose inter- 
ests are inseparable from slaver)'-, to reflect that 
abolition will gain an equivalent benefit from the 
identification of the President's defe"nse with iheir 
cherished institution. Abolition is a slow but 
irrepressible uprising of principles of natural jus- 
tice and humanity, obnoxious to prejudice, be- 
cause they conflict inconveniently with existing 
material, social, and pohtical interests. It belongs 
to others than statesmen, charged with the care of 
presentinterests,to conductthe social reformation 
of mankind in its broadest bearings. I leave to 
Abolitionists their own work of self-vifdicatioii. 
I may, however, remind slaveholders that there 
is a time when oppression and persecution cease 
to be effectual against such movements; and then 
the odium they have before unjustly incurred be- 
comes an element of strength and power. Chris- 
tianity, blindly maligned during three centuries 
by Pretors, Governors, Senates, Councils, and 
Emperors, towered above its enemies in a fourth; 



and even the cross on which its Founder had ex- 
pired, and which therefore was the emblem of its 
shame, became the sign under which it went 
forth evermore thereafter, conquering and to con- 
quer. Abolition is yet in its first century. 
- The President raises in his defense a false issue, 
and elaborates an irrelevant argument to prove 
that Congress has no right or power, nor has any 
sister Stable any right or power, to interfere within 
a slave State, by legislation or force, to abolish 
slavery therein — as if you, or I, or any other 
responsible man, ever maintained the contrary. 

The President distorts the Constitution from 
its simple text, so as to make it expressly and 
directly defend, protect, and guaranty African 
slavery. Thus lie alleges that " the Government" 
which resulted from the Revolution was a " Fed- 
eral Republic of the free white men of the Colo- 
nies;" whereas, on the contrary, the Declaration 
of Independence asserts the political equality of 
all men; and even the Constitution itself carefully 
avoids any political recognition, not merely of 
slavery, but of the diversity of races. The Pres- 
ident represents the Fathers as having contem- 
plated and provided for a permanent increase of 
the number of slaves in some of the States, and 
therefore forbidden Congress to touch slavery in 
the way of attack or offense, and as having there- 
fore also placed it under the general safeguard 
of the Constitution; whereas, the Fathers, by 
authorizing Congress to abolish the African slave 
trade after 1808, as a means of attack, inflicted 
on slavery in the States a blow, of which they 
expected it to languish immediately, and ulti- 
mately to expire. 

The President closes his defense in the annual 
message with a deliberate assault, very incongru- 
ous ill such a place, upon some of the northern 
States. At the same .time he abstains, with 
marked caution, from naming the accused States. 
They, however, receive a compliment at his hands , 
by way of giving keenness to his rebuke, which 
enables us to identify them. They are northern 
States " which were conspicuous in founding the 
Republic." All of the original northern States 
were conspicuous in that great transaction. All 
of them, therefore, are accused. The offense 
charged is, that they disregard their constitu- 
tional obligations; and, although " conscious of 
their inability to heal admitted and palpable so- 
cial evils of their own, confessedly within their 
jurisdiction, they engage in an offensive, hope- 
less, and illegal undertaking, to reform the do- 
mestic iiTStitutions of the southern States, at the 
peril of the very existence of the Constitution, 
and of all the countless benefits which it has 
conferred." I challenge the President to the 
proof, in behalf of Massachusetts; although I 
have only the interest common to all Americans 
and to all men in her great fame. What one 
corporate or social evil is there, of which she is 
conscious, and conscious also of inability to heal 
it .' Is it ignorance, preji»dice, bigotry, vice, 
I crime, public disorder, poverty, or disease, afiiict- 
ij ing the minds or the bodies of her people? There 
j| she stands. Survey her universities, colleges, 
1 academies, observatories, primary schools, Sun- 
I day schools, penal codes, and penitentiaries. De- 
;) scend into her quarries, walk over her fields and 
I through her gardens, observe her manufactories 
; of a thousand various fabrics, watch her steamers 



6 



as lending every river and inlet on your own coast, 
.•md her ships displaying their canvas on every 
sea; follow her fishermen in their adventurous 
voyages from her own and adjacent bays to the 
icy ocean under either pole; and then return and 
enter her hospitals, which cure or relieve suffering 
humanity in every condition and at every period 
of life, from the lying-in to the second childhood, 
and wiiich not only restore sight to the blind, and 
heai-ing to the deaf, and speech to the dumb, but 
also bring back wandering reason to the insane, 
and teachlsven the idiot to think ! Massachusetts, I 
sir, is a model of Slates, worthy of all honor; and i 
though she was most conspicuous of all the States 
in the establishment of republican institutions 
here, she is eVen more conspicuous still for the 
municipal wisdom with which she has made 
tliem contribute to the welfare of her people, and 
to the greatness of the Republic itself. 

In behalf of New York, for whom it is my 
righi and duty to speak, I defy the presidential 
accuser. Mark her tranquil magnanimity, which 
becomes a State for whose delivery from tyranny 
Schuyler devised and labored, who received her 
political constitution from Hamilton, her intel- 
lectual and physical development from Clinton, 
and her lessons in humanity from Jay. As she 
waves her wand over the continent, trade for- 
sakes the broad natural channels which conveyed 
it before to the Delaware and Chesapeake bays, 
and to the Gulfs of St. Lawrence and Mexico, 
and obedient to her command pours itself through 
her artificial channels into her own once obscure 
sea-port. She stretche.s her v\fand again towards 
the ocean, and the commerce of all the continents 
concentrates itself at her feet; and with it strong 
and full floods of immigration ride in, contributing 
labor, capital, art, valor, and enterprise, to perfect 
and embellish our ever-widening empii-e. 

When, and on what occasion, has Massachu- 
setts or New York officiously and illegally in- 
truded herself within the jurisdiction of sister 
States, to modify or reform their institutions? 
No, no, sir. Their faults have been quite differ- 
ent. They have conceded too often and too much 
for their own just dignity and influence in Federal 
administration, to the querulous complaints of the 
States, in whose behalf the President arraigns 
them. I thank the President for the insult which, 
though so deeply unjust, was perhaps needful to 
arouse them to their duty in this great emerg- 
ency. 

I'he President, in this connection, reviews the 
acquisitions of new domain, the organization of 
new Territories, and the admission of new States, 
and arrives at results which must be as agreeably 
surprising to the slave States, as they are as- 
tounding to the free States. He finds that the 
former have been altogether guiltless of political 
-ambition; while he convicts the latter, not only of 
unjust territorial aggrandizement, but also of false 
and fraudulent clamor against the slave vStates, to 
cover their own aggi-essions. Notwithstanding 
the President's elaborated misconceptions, these 
historical facts remain, namely: that no acquisi- 
tion whatever has ever been made at the instance 
of the free States, and with a view to their aggran- 
dizement: that Louisiana and Florida, incident- 
a?iy acquired for general and important national 
objects, have already yielded to the slave States 
three States of their own class, while Texas was 



avowedly annexed as a means of security to 
slavery, and one slave State has been already 
admitted from that acquisition, and Congress has 
stipulated for the admission of four more: that, 
by way of equivalent for the admission of Cali- 
fornia, a free State, the slave States have obtained 
a virtual repeal of the Mexican law which for- 
bade slavery in New Mexico and Utah; and that, 
as a consequence of that extraordinary legisla- 
tion, Congress has also rescinded the prohibition 
of slavery, which, in 1820, was extended over all 
that part of Louisiana, except Missouri, which 
lies north of 36° 30' of north latitude. Sir, the 
real crime of the northern States is this: they are 
forty degrees too high on the arc of north latitude. 

I dismiss for the present tlie President's first 
defense against the accusation of the new State 
of Kansas. 

On the 24th of January, 1856, when no import- 
ant event had happened which was unknown at 
the date of the President's annual message, he 
submitted to Congress his second defense, in the 
form of a special message. In this paper, the 
President deplores, as the cause of all the troubles 
which have occurred in Kansas, delays of the or- 
ganization of the Territory which have been per- 
mitted by the Governor, Mr. Reeder. The organic 
law was passed by Congress on the 31st of May, 

1854, but on that day there was not one lawful 
elector, citizen, or inhabitant, within the Terri- 
tory; while the question, whether slavery or uni- 
versal freedom should be established there, was 
devolved practically on the first legislative bodies 
to be elected by the people who were to become 
thereafter the inhabitants of Kansas. The elec- 
tion for the first legislative bodies was appointed 
by the Governor to be held on the 3flth of March, 
1855; and the 2d day of July, 1855, was desig- 
nated for the organization of the Legislative As- 
sembly. The only civilized community that was 
in contact with the new Territory was Missouri, 
a slaveholding State, at whose instance the pro- 
hibition of slavery within the Territory had been 
abrogated, so that she might attempt to colonize 
it with slaves. Immigrants were invited not only 
from all parts of the United States, but also from 
all other parts of the world, with a pledge that 
the people of the new Territory should be left 
perfectly free to establish or prohibit slavery. A 
special election, however, was held within the 
Territory on the 29th day of November, 1854, 
withoutany preliminary census of the inhabitants, 
for the purpose of choosing a Delegate who might 
sit, without aright to vote in Congress, during the 
second session of the Thirty-Third Congress, 
which was to begin on the first Monday of De- 
cember, 1854, and to end on the 3d day of March, 

1855. Mr. John W. Whitfield was certified to 
be elected. There were vehement complaints of 
illegality in the election, but his title was never- 
theless not contested, for the palpalole reasons, 
that an investigation under the circumstances of 
the Territory, during so short a session of Con- 
gress, would be impossible, and that the question 
was of inconsiderable magnitude. Yet the Pres- 
ident laments that the Governor neglected to order 
the first election for the legislative ijodies of the 
new Territory to be held simultaneously with 
that hurried congressional election. He assigns 
his reasons: 

" Auy question appertaining to the qualifications of per- 



«ans voting as the people of the Territory would (in that but not of emi^jrants, named the Platte county- 
case, incidentally) have necessarily passed under the sup- I Self-Defensive Association, assembled at Weston, 
ervision of Congress, (meaning the House of Representa- ^^^ ^j^^ western border of Missouri, in the inter- 



tives,) and would have been determined before conflicting 
passions had been inflamed by time, and before an oppor- 
tunity would have been aftbrded for systematic interference 
by the people of individual States." 

Could the President, in any explicit arrange- 
ment of words, more distinctly have confessed 
his disappointment in failing to secure a merely 



est of slavery, and it published through the organ 
of the President of the United States at that place 
a resolution, that "when called upon by any 
citizen of Kansas, its members would hold them- 
selves in readiness to assist in removing any and 
all emigrants who should go there under the aid 



formal election of legislative bodies within the I of northern emigrant societies." This associa 
Territory, in fraud of the organic law, of the tion afterwards often made good its atrocious 
people of Kansas, and of the cause of natural ] threats by violence against the property, peace., 
justice and humanity ? Il and lives of unoffending citizens of Kansas; but 
The President then proceeds to launch severe l{ the President of the United States, so far from 
denunciations against what he calls a propagan- || denouncing it, does not even note its existence, 
dist attempt to colonize the Territory with oppo- : The majority of the Committee on Territories 
nents of slavery. The whole American continent j ingeniousjy elaborate the President s charge, and 
has been undergoing a process of colonization, "' ■ ■■ ' - ' -•- •-- 



in many fornts, throughout a period of three j 
hundred and fifty years. The only common ele- ; 
ment of all those forms was propagandism. Were 1 
not the voyages of Columbus propagandist ex- 1 
peditions,underthe auspices of the Pope of Rome? I 
Was not the wide occupation of Spanish Amer- 1 
ica a propagandism of the Catholic church.' The ' 
settlement of Massachusetts by the Pilgrims; of j 
the New Netherlands by the Reformers of Hoi- [ 
land; the later plantation of the Mohawk valley 
by the Palatines; the establishment of Pennsyl- i 
vania by the Friends; the mission of the Mora- j 
vians at Bethlehem, in the same State; the found 



arraign Massachusetts, her emigrant aid society, 
and her emigrants. What has Massachusetts 
done worthy of censure? Before the Kansas or- 
ganic law was passed by Congress, Massachu- 
setts, on application, granted to some of her citi- 
zens, who were engaged in "taking up" new 
lands in western regions, one of those common 
charters which are used by all associations, in- 
dustrial, moral, social, scientific, and religious, 
now-a-days, instead of copartnerships, for the 
more convenient transaction of their fiscal affairs. 
The actual capital is some $60,000. Neither the 
granting of the charter, nor any legislative action 
of the association under it, was morally wrong. 



ation of Maryland by Lord Baltimore and his !|To emigrate from one State or Territory singly 
-"•■-■• ■ • - or in company with others, with or without in- 

corporation by statute, is a right of every citizen 
of the United States, as it is a right of every free- 
man in the world. The State that denies this 
right is a tyranny— the subject to whom it is de- 
nied is a slave. Such free emigration is the chief 
element of American progress and civilization. 
Without it, there could be no community, ao 
political Territory, no State of Kansas. Without 
it, there could have been no United States of Amer- 
ica. To retain and carry into Kansas cherished 
political as well as moral, social, and religious 
convictions, is a right of every emigrant. Must 
emigrants to that territory carry there only their 
persons, and leave behind their minds and souls, 
disembodied and wandering in their native lands ? 
They only are fit founders of a State who exer- 
cise independence of opinion; and it is to the 
exercise of that right that our new States, equally 
with all the older ones, owe their intelligence and 
vigor. 



colony of British Catholics; the settlement of 
Jamestown by the Cavaliers and Churchmen of 
England; that of South Carolina by the Hugue- 
nots; — were not all these propagandist coloniza- 
tions? Was not Texas settled by a colony ofi 
slaveholders, and California by companies of! 
freemen? Yet never before did any prince, king, 
emperor, or president, denounce such coloniza- j 
tions. Does any law of nature or nations forbid i 
them? Does any public authority quarantine, on 
the ground of opinion, the ships which are con- | 
tinually pouring into the gates of New York j 
whole religious societies from Ireland, Wales, \ 
Germany, and Norway, with their pastors, and 
clerks, and choirs? 

But the President charges that the propagan- 
dists entered Kansas with a design to " anticipate 
and force the determination of the slavery ques- 
tion within the Territory," (in favor of freedom,) 
forgetting, nevertheless, that he has only just be- 
fore deplored a failure of his own to anticipate and 
force the determination of that question in favor 
of slavery, by a coup-de-main, in advance even 
of their departure from their homes in the At- 
lantic States and in Europe. He charges, more- 
over, that the propagandists designed to " prevent 
the free and naturat action of the inhabitants in 
the intended organization ofthc Territory, "when 
in fact they were pursuing the only free and | 
natural course to organize it by immigrating and 
becoming permanent inhabitants, citizens, and 
electors of Kansas. Not one unlawful or tur- 
bulent act has been hitherto charged against any 
one of the propagandists of freedom. Mark, 
now, an extraordinary inconsistency of the Pres- 
ident. On the 29th of June, 1854, only twenty- 
nine days after the opening of the Territory, and 
before one of these emigrants had reached Kan- 
sas, or evea Missouri, apropagandistassociation, 



" There are, who, distant from their native soil, 
Still for their own and country '.s glory toil ; 
While some, fast rooted to their parent spot, 
In life are useless, and in death, forgot." 
It is not morally wrong for Massachusetts to 
aid her sons, by a charter, to do what in itself is 
innocent and commendable. The President and 
the majority of the committee maintain that such 
associations are in violation of national or at 
least of international laws. Here is the Consti- 
tution of the United States, and here are the Stat- 
utes at Large, in ten volumes octavo. Let the 
President or his defenders point out the inhibi- 
tion. They specify, particularly, that the action 
of the State violates a law of comity, which reg- 
ulates the intercourse of independent States, and 
especially the intercourse between the members 
of the Federal Union. Here are Valtel and Bur- 



8 



lamaqui. Let them point out in those pages this 
law of comity. There is no law of comity which 
forbids nations from permitting; and encourag-ine: 
emigration, on the ground of opinion. Moreover, 
slavery is an outlaw under the law of nations. 
Still further, the Constitution of the United States 
has expressly incorporated into itself all of the 
laws of comity, for regulating the intercourse be- 
tween independent States, which it deems proper 
to adopt. Whatever is^ forbidden expressly by 
the Constitution is unlawful. Whatever is not 
forbidden is lawful. The supposed law of comity 
is not incorporated into the Constitution. 

With the'aid of the Committee on Ten-itories, 
we discover that the emigrants from Massachu- 
setts have violated the supposed national laws, 
not by any unlawful conduct of their own, but by 
provoking the unlawful and flagitious conduct of 
the invaders of Kansas. " They passed through 
Missouri in large numbers, using violent language 
and giving unmistakable indications of their hos- 
tility to the domestic institutions of that State," 
and thus "they created apprehensions that the 
object of the emigrant aid company was to abo- 
litionize Kansas, as a means of prosecuting a 
•relentless warfare upon the institution of slavery 
within the limits of Missouri, which apprehen- 
sion, increasing with the progress of events, ulti- 
mately became settled convictions of the people of 
western Missouri. 

Missouri builds railroads, steamboats, and 
wharves. It cani\ot be, therefore, that the mere 
"largeness of the numbers" of the eastern trav- 
elers offended or alarmed the borderers. I con- 
fess my surprise that the sojourners used violent 
language; it Seems unlike them. I confess my 
greater surprise that the borderers were disturbed 
so deeply )jy mer'fe words; it seems unlike them. 
Which of the domestic institutions of Missouri 
were those against which the travelers manifested 
determined hostility? Not, certainly, her manu- 
factories, banks, railroads, churches, and schools. 
Allthese are domestic institutions held in high 
respect by the men of Massachusetts, and are just 
such ones as these emigrants are now establishing 
in Kansas. It was, therefore, African slavery 
alone — a peculiar domestic institution of Missouri 
—against which their hostility was directed. 
Waiving a suspicious want of proof of the un- 
wise conduct charged against them, I submit that 
clearly they did not thereby endanger that peculiar 
institution in Missouri; for they passed directly 
through that State into Kansas. How, then, 
were the borderers provoked ? The Missouvians 
inferred, from the language and demeanor of the 
travelers, that they would aboUtionize Kansas, 
and thereafter, by means of Kansas abolitionized, 
prosecute a relentless warfare ag'ainst slavery 
in Missouri. Far-seeing statesmen are these 
Missouri borderers, but less deliberate than far- 
sighted. Kansas was not to be abolitionized. It j 
had never been otherwise than abolitionized. j 
Abolitionized Kansas would constitute no means 
for the prosecution of such a warfare. Missouri 
lies adjacent to abolitionized Iowa on the north, 
and to abolitionized Illinois on the east, yet neither 
of those Slates has ever been used for such designs. 
How could this fearful enemy prosecute a warfare 
against slavery in Missouri ? Only by buying the 
plantations of her citizens at their own prices, 
and so qualifying themselves to speak their hos- 



tility through the ballot-boxes. Could apprehen- 
sions so absurd justify the invasion of Kansas.' 
Are the people of Kansas to be disfranchised and 
trodden down by the President of the United 
States in punishment for any extravagance of 
emigrants, in Missouri, on the way to that Ter- 
ritory ? 

Such is the President's second defense, so far 
as it presents n«w matter in avoidance of the accu- 
sation of the new State of Kansas. 

I proceed, in the third place, to establish the 
truth of the accusations. Of what sort must the 
proofs be? Manifestly only such as the circum- 
stances of the case permit to exist. Not engrossed 
documents, authenticated by executive, judicial, 
or legislative oflicers. The transactions occurred 
in an unorganized country. All the authorities 
subsequently established in the Territory are 
implicated, all the complainants disfranchised. 
Only presumptive evidence, derived from the 
cotemporaneous statements and actions of the 
parties concerned, can be required. 

Such presumptive evidence is derived from- the 
nature and character of the President's defenses. 
Why did the President plead at all on the 31st of 
December last, when the new State of Kansas 
was yet unorganized, and could not appear here 
to prefer her accusations, until the 23d of March? 
Why, if he must answer so prematurely, did he 
not plead ageneraland direct denial? If he must 
plead specially, why did he not set forth the facts, 
instead of withholding all actual information con- 
cerning the case? Why, since, instead of defend- 
ing himself, he must implead his accuser, did he 
not state, at least, the ground on which that 
accuser claimed to justify the conduct of which 
he complained? Why did he threaten " to over- 
come and suppress " the people of Kansas, as 
insurrectionists, if he did not mean to terrify 
them, and to prevent their appearing here, or at 
least'to prejudice their cause? Why did he mock 
them with a promise of protection thereafter, 
against interference by citizens of other States, 
if they should deport themselves peacefully and 
submissively to the territorial authorities, if no 
cause for apprehending such interference had 
already been given by previous invasion? Why 
did he labor to embarrass his accuser by identi- 
fying her cause with the subject of abolition of 
slavery, and stigmatize her supporters with op- 
probrious epithets, and impute to thorn depraved 
and seditious motives? Why did he interpose 
the false and impertinent issue, whether one State 
could intervene, by its laws, or by force, to abol- 
ish slavery in another State? Why did he dis- 
tort the Constitution, and present it as expressly 
guarantying the perpetuity of slavery ? Why did 
he arraign so unnecessarily and so unjustly, not 
one, but all of the original northern States? Why 
did he drag into this case, where only Kansas is 
concerned, a studied, partial, and prejudicial 
history of the past enlargements of the national 
domain, and of the past contests between the slave 
States and the free States, in their rivalry for the 
balance of power? 

Why did not the President rest content with 
one such attack upon the character and conduct 
of the new State of Kansas, in anticipating her 
coming, if he felt assured that she really had no 
merit on which to stand? Why did he submit 
a second plea in advance ? Why in this plea 



9 



does he dsplore the delays which prevented the 
Missouri borderers from eftecting the conquest 
of Kansas and the estabhshment of slavery tliere- 
in, at the time of the congressional election held 
in November, 1854, in fraud of the Kansas law, 
and of justice and humanity? Why, without 
reason, or authority of public or of national law, 
does he denounce Massachusetts, her emigrant 
aid society, and her emigrants? If "propagan- 
dist" emigrations must be denounced, why does 
he spare the Platte County Self-Defensive Asso- 
ciation ? Why does he charge Governor Rceder 
with " failing to put forth all his energies to 
prevent or counteract the tendencies to illegality 
which are found to exist in all imperfectly organ- 
ized and newly-associated countries," if, indeed, 
no " illegality" has occurred there ? While thus, 
by implication, admitting that such illegality has 
occurred in Kansas, why does he not tell us its 
nature and extent? Why, when Governor Reeder 
was implicated in personal conduct, not criminal, 
but incongruous with his official relations, did the 
President retain him in office until after he had 
proclaimed at Easton that Kansas had been subju- 
gated by the borderers of Missouri; and why, after 
he had done so, and had denounced the Legisla- 
ture, did the President remove him for the same 
preexisting cause only ? Wliy does the President 
admit that the election for the legislative bodies 
of Kansas was held under circumstances inau- 
spicious to a truthful and legal result, if, never- 
theless, the result attained was indeed a truth- 
ful and legal one? On what evidence does the 
President ground his statement, that after that 
election, there were mutual complaints of usurp- 
ation, fraud, and violence, when we hear from 
no other quarter of such complaints made by the 
party that prevailed ? If there were such mutual 
accusations, and even if they rested on probable 
grounds, would that fact abate the right of the 
people of Kansas to a government of their own, 
securing a safe and well ordered freedom? Why 
does the President argue that the Governor [Mr. 
Reeder] alone had the power to receive and con- 
sider the returns of the election of the legislative 
bodies, and that he certified those returns in 
fifteen out of the twenty-two districts, when he 
knows that the Governor, being his own agent, 
gave the certificates on the ground that the returns 
were technically correct, and that the illegality 
complained of was in the conduct of the elections, 
and in the making up of the returns by the judges, 
and that the terror of the armed invasion pre- 
vented all complaints of this kind from being 
presented to the Governor ? Why does the Presi- 
dent repose on the fact that the Governor, on the 
ground of informality in the returns, rejected the 
members who were chosen in the seven other 
districts, and ordered new elections therein, and 
certified in favor of the persons then chosen, when 
he knows that the majority, elected in the fifteen 
districts, expelled at once the persons chosen at 
such second elections, and admitted those origin- 
ally returned as elected in these seven districts, on 
the ground that the Governor's rejection of them, 
and the second elections which he ordered, were 
unauthorized and illegal ? Why does the Presi- 
dent, although omitting to mention this last fact, 
nevertheless justify the expulsion of these newly- 
elected members, on the ground thatit was author- 
ized by parliamentary law, when he knows that 



there was no parliamentary or other law' existing 
in the Territory, but the organic act of Congress, 
which co)iferred no such power on the Legisla- 
ture ? Why was Governor Reeder replaced by 
Mr. Shannon, who immediately proclantied that 
the legislative bodies which his predecessor had 
1! denounced were the legitimate Legislature of the 
ji Territory? Why does the President plead that 
11 the subject of the alleged Missourian usurpation 
jjand tyranny in Kansas was one which, by its 
j nature, appertained exclusively to the jurisdiction 
i of the local authorities of the Territory, when, if 
I the charges were true, there were no legitimate 
local authorities within the Territory ? Is a foreign 
usurpation in a defenseless Territory of the United 
States to be tolerated, if only it be successful? 
I And is the government de facto, by whomsoever 
[usurped, and with whatever tyrainiy exercised, 
entitled to demand obedience from the people, and 
I to be recognized by the President of the United 
States? Why does he plead that "whatever 
I irregularities may have occurred, it is now too 
I late'to raise the question?" Is there nothing left 
I but endurance to citizens of the United States, 
I constituting a whole pohtical community of men, 
[women, and children — an incipient American 
j State — subjugated and oppressed ? Must they sit 
j down in peace, abandoned, contented, and des- 
I pised? Why does he plead, that " at least it is a 
question as to which, neither now, nor at any 
previous time, has the least possible legal authority 
! been possessed by the President of the United 
j States?" Did any magistrate ever before make 
! such an exhibition of ambitious imbecility? Can- 
I not Congress clothe him with power to act, and 
j is it not his duty to ask power to remove usurpa- 
tion and subvert tyranny in a Territory of the 
United States? Are these the tone, the tenor, 
and the staple, of a defense, where the accused 
is guiltless, and the crimes charged were never 
committed ? The President virtually confesses all 
the transactions charged, by thus presenting a 
connected system of maxims and principles, in- 
vented to justify them. 

I proceed, however, to clinch conviction by 
direct and positive proofs: First, the statements 
of the party which has been overborne. General 
Pomeroy and his associates, in behalf of the 
State of Kansas, make this representation con- 
cerning the congressional election held in the 
Territory on the 30th of November, 1854: 

" The first ballot-box tliat was opened upon our virgin 
soil was closed to us by overpowering numbers and impend- 
ing force. So bold and reckless were our invaders, that 
they cared not to conceal their attack. They came upon 
us, not in :i, :■ ;:m; !■ iil' voters to steal away our franchise, 
but li' i ■', i ; - lily, to snatch it with a strong hand. 
Till > IK im their own homes, and in compact 

and iiij I! .1 ':' I! i-. witli arms in hand and provisions for 

the exp 'iliiio;!. 111:11. -hi'i! i'l ■ |ii>li-. i;nd, when their work 

wasdnn.', vi'Hu-ji.nI w :, ,1 ■ n". It is unnecessary 

to enter intii il:i- il(!:iil- ili to say that, in three 

distrietti, in whi'-ii, li)- tii in" i i. na.u'able evidence, there 
were not one hundred and lil'ty voters, most of whom 
refused to participate in the mockery of the elective fran- 
chise, these invaders polled over a thousand votes." 

In regard to the election of the 30th of March, 
1855, the same party states: 

" They (the ivrissourians) arrived at their several destina- 
tion'; t!i" iii'.-in f '-friro the election, and having pitched their 
cani|> ! 1 , ' 1 i ir sentries, waited for tlie coming day. 
Ba<.'^ : . ic there, will! arms and ammunition 

enciii';.:i In: :i ;,■ i: iirti'd fight, and among them two brass 
fiL'ld pieces, ready charged. Tlieycanie with dnuus boat- 
ing and flags flying, and their leaders were of the most 



12 



national pledge, which he concurred in giving, 
that they should be left perfectly free to reject and 
exclude that justly obnoxious system. It thus 
appears, that the President of the United States 
holds the people of Kansas prostrate and enslaved 
at his fvet. 

To complete the painful account of this great 
crime, it is necessary now to add, that there has 
not been one day nor night, since the govern- 
ment of Kansas was constituted and confided to 
the President of the United States, in which either 
the properties, or the liberties, or even the lives, 
of its citizens have been secure against the vio- 
lence and vengeance of the extreme foreign fac- 
tion which lie upholds and protects. At this day, 
Kansas is becoming, more distinctly than before, 
the scene of a conflict of irreconcilable opinions, 
to be determined by brute force. No immigrant 
goes there unarmed, no citizen dwells there in 
safety unarmed; armed masses of men are pro- 
ceeding into the Territory, from various parts of 
the United States, to complete the work of inva- 
sion and tyranny which he has thus begun, under 
circumstances of fraud and perfidy unworthy of 
the character of a ruler of a free people. This 
gathering conflict in Kansas divides the sympa- 
thies, interests, passions, and prejudices of the 
people of the United States. Whether, under 
such circumstances, it can be circumscribed with- 
in the limits of the Territory of Kansas, must be 
determined by statesmen from their knowledge 
of the courses of civil commotions, which have 
involved questions of moral right and conscien- 
tious duty, as well as balances of political power. 
Whether, on theotherhand,the people of Kansas, 
under these circumstances, will submit to this 
tyranny of a citizen of the United States like 
themselves, whose term of pol itical power is nearly 
expired, can be determined by considering it in 
the aspect in which it is viewed by themselves. 
Speechless here, as they yet are, I give utterance 
to their united voices, and, holding in my hand 
the arraignment of George III. by the Congress 
of 1776, I impeach— in tlie words of that immor- 
tal text— the President of the United States : 

" He has refused to pass laws for the accom- 
modation of the people, unless they would relin- 
quish the right of representation in their Legisla- 
ture, a right inestimable to them, and formidable 
to tyrants only: 

" He has called together legislative bodies at a 
place unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from 
the depository of their publicrecords, for the sole 
purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with 
his measures: 

He has prevented legislative Houses from being 
elected, for no other cause than his conviction 
that they would " oppose with manly firmness 
his invasions on the rights of the people: 

" He has refused for a long time after" spurious 
legislative Houses were imposed by himself, by 
usurpation, on the people of Kansas, " to cause 
others to be elected, whereby the legislative 
powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned 
t,o the people at large, for their exercise, the State 
remaining in the mean time exposed to all the 
danger of invasion from without, and civil war 
within: 

"He has created 'a multitude of new offices, 
and sent hither swarms of officers, to harass our 
people, and eat out their substance: 



"He has kept among us, in times of peace, 
standing armies, to compel our submission to a 
foreign" Legislature," and hasaffected to render 
the military independent of, and superior to, the 
civil power: 

"He has combined with others to subject us 
to a jurisdiction foreign to our Constitution, and 
unacknowledged by our laws, giving his assent 
to their acts of pretended legislation: 

"For protecting" invaders of Kansas " from 
punishment for any murders which they shall 
commit on the inhabitants" of this Territory: 

"For abolishing the free system of American 
law in" this Territory, "establishing therein an 
arbitrary Government, so as to render it at once 
an example and fit instrument for introducing the 
same absolute rule into" other Territories: 

"For taking away our charter," abolishing our 
most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally 
the powers of our Government: 

"For suspending our own Legislature, and 
declaring" an usurping Legislature, constituted 
by himself, "invested with power to legislate for 
us in all cases whatsoever." 

What is wanting here to fill up the complement 
of -a high judicial process? Is it an accuser.' 
The youngest-born of the Republic is before you, 
imploring you to rescue her from immolation 
on the altar of public faction. Is it a crime? 
Bethink yourselves what it is that has been 
subverted. It is the whole of a complete and 
rounded-oif republican government of a Territory 
indeed, by name, but, in substance, a civil State. 
Consider the efl['ect. The people of Kansas tcerc 
"perfectly free." They now are free only to 
submit and obey. Consider whose system that 
republican government was, and the ]iower that 
established it. It was one of the constitutions 
of the United States, established by an act of the 
Congress of the United States. Consider what 
a tyranny it is that has been. built on that atro- 
cious usurpation. It is not a discriminating 
tyranny, that selects and punishes one, or a few, 
or even many, but it disfranchises all, and reduces 
every citizen to abject slavery. Examine the 
code created by the Legislature. All the statutes 
of the State of Missouri are enacted in gross, 
without alteration or amendment, for the gov- 
ernment of Kansas; and then, at the end, the 
hasty blunder of misnomer is corrected by an 
explanatory act, that wherever the word " State" 
occurs, it means" Territory." And whatacode! 
One that stifles not, indeed, the fruits of the 
womb, but the equally important element, of a 
State, the fruits — the immortal fruits — of the 
mind; a code that puts in peril all rights and lib- 
erties whatsoever, by denying to men the right to 
know, to utter, and to argue, freely, according to 
conscience — a right in itself conservative of all 
other rights and liberties. Is an oftendcr want- 
ing? He stands before you, in many respects 
the most eminent man in all the world — the Pres- 
ident of the United States — the constitutional and 
chosen defender and protector of the people who 
have been subjugated and enslaved. Is there 
anything of dignity or authority wanting to this 
tribunal? Where elsewhere shall be found one 
more august than the Senate of the United States? 
It is the ancient, constant, and undoubted right 
and usage of Parliaments — it is the chief purpose 
of their being — to question and complain of ail 



13 



persons, of what degree soever, found grievous 
to the Commonwealth, in abusing the power and 
trust committed to' them l)y the people. Does 
this tribunal need a motive ? We have that, too, 
in painful reality. These usurpations and op- 
pressions have hitherto rested with the President 
of the United States, and those whom he has 
abetted. If they shall be left unredressed, they 
will henceforth become, by adoption, our own. 

The conviction of the offending President is 
complete, and now he sinks out of view. His 
punishment rests with the people of the United 
States, whose trust he has betrayed. His con- 
viction was only incidental to the business which 
is the order of the day. The order of the day is 
the redress of the wrongs of Kansas. 

How like unto each other are the parallels of 
tyranny and revolution in all countries and in all 
tunes! Kansas is to-day in the very act of revo- 
lution against a tyranny of the President of the 
United States, identical in all its prominent fea- 
tures with that tyranny of t'le King of England 
which gave birth to the American Revolution. 
Kansas has instituted a revolution, simply be- 
cause ordinary remedies can never be applied in 
great political emergencies. There is a profound 
philosophy that belongs to revolutions. Accord- 
ing to that philosophy, the President is assumed 
by the people of Kansas to entertain a reSent- 
ment which can never be appeased , and his power, 
consequently, must be wholly taken away. Hap- 

f)ily, however, for Kansas, and for us, her revo- 
ution is one that was anticipated and sanctioned 
and provided for in the Constitution of the United 
States, and is therefore a peaceful and (paradox- 
ical as the expression may seem) a constitutional 
one. Never before have I seen occasion so great 
for admiring the wisdom and forecast of those 
who raised that noble edifice of civilgovernment. 
The people of Kansas, deprived of their sover- 
eignty by a domestic tyranny, have nevertheless 
lawfully rescued it provisionally, and, so exercis- 
ing it, have constituted themselves a State, and 
applied to Congress to admit them as such into 
the Federal Union. Congress has power to admit 
the nc;w Stflte thus organized. The favorable 
exercise of that power will terminate and crown 
the revolution. Once a State, the people of Kan- 
sas can preserve internal order, and defend them- 
selves against invasion. Thus, the constitutional 
remedy is as effectual as it is peaceful and simple. 
This is the remedy for the evils existing in the 
Territory of Kansas, which I propose. Happily, 
there is no need to prove it to be cither a lawful 
one or a proper one, or the only possible one. 
•The President of the United States and the Com- 
mittee on Territories unanimously concede all this 
broad ground, because he recommends it, and 
they adopt it. 

Wherein, then, do I differ from them ? Simply 
thus. I propose to apply the remedy now, by 
admitting the new State with its present popula- 
tion and present constitution. My opponents 
insist on postponing the measure until the Terri- 
tory shall be conct'ded by the usurping authori- 
ties to contain ninety-three thousand seven hun- 
dred inhabitants, and until those authorities shall 
direct and authorize the people to organize a new 
State, under a new constitution. In other words, 
I propose to allow the people of Kansas toa])[)ly 
the constitutional remedy at once. The Presi- 



I dent proposes to defer it indefinitely, and to com- 
j mit the entire application of it to the hands of the 
Missouri borderers. He confesses the inadequacy 
j of that course by asking appropriations of money 
to enable him to maintain and preserve order within 
I the Territory until the indefinite period when the 
j constitutional remedy shall be applied. There 
j is no sufficient reason for the delay which the 
President advises.' He admits the rightfulness 
and necessity of the remedy. It is as rightful 
and necessary now as it ever will be. It'is de- 
I manded by the condition and circumstances of the 
people of Kansas now. You cannot justly post- 
pone, any more than you can justly deny, that 
right. To postpone would be a denial. The 
President will need no grant of money, or of 
armed men, to enforce obedience to law, M'hen 
you shall have redressed the wrongs of which the 
people complain. Even under Governments less 
free than our own, thereis no need of power where 
justice holds the helm. When j_ustice is impar- 
tially administered, the obedience of the subject 
or citizen will be voluntary, cheerful, and practi- 
cally unlimited. Freedom justly due cannot be 
conceded too soon. True freedom exists — the 
utmost bounds of civil liberty are obtained, only 
where complaints are freely heard, deeply con- 
sidered, and speedily redressed. So only can you 
restore to Kansas the perfect freedom which you 
pledged, and she has lost. 

The Constitution does not prescribe ninety- 
three thousand seven hundred, or any other num- 
ber of people, as necessary to constitute'a State. 
Besides, under the present ratio of increase, Kan- 
sas, whose population now is forty thousand, 
will number one hundred thousand in a few 
months. The point made concerning numbers ia 
therefore practically unimportant and frivolous. 
The President objects that the past proceedings 
by which the new State of Kansas was organized, 
were irregular in three respects: First, that 
they were instituted, conducted, and completed, 
without a previous permission by Congress, or 
by the local authorities within the Territory. 
Secondly, that they were instituted, conducted, 
and completed by a party, and not by the whole 
people of Kansas; and thirdly, that the new State 
I holds an attitude of defiance and insubordination 
! towards the territorial authorities and the Fed- 
eral Union. I reply, first, that if the proceedings 
I in question were irregular and partisanlike and 
[ factious, the exigencies of the case would at least 
i excuse the faults, and Congress ha^ unlimited 
I discretion to waive them. Secondly, the pro- 
ceedings were not thus irregular, partisanlike, 
I and factious, because no act of Congress forbade 
i them — no act of the Territorial Legislature for- 
I bade them, directly Or by implication — nor had 
j the Territorial Legislature power either to author- 
! ize or to prohibit them. The proceedings were, 
I indeed, instituted by a party who favored them. 
I But they were prosecuted and consummated in 
I the customary forms of popular elections, which 
I were open to all the inhabitants of the Territory 
qualified to vote by the organic law, and to no 
others; and they have in no case come into con- 
flict, nor does the new State now act or assume' 
j to engage in conflict with either the territorial 
' authorities or the government of the Union. 
I Thirdly, there can he no irregularity where 
1 there is no law prescribing what shall be regular. 



14 



Congress has passed no law establishing regula- 
tions for the organization or admission of new 
States. Precedents in such cases, being without 
foundation in law, are without authority. This 
is a country whose Government is regulated, not 
by precedents, but by constitutions. But, if pre- 
cedents were necessary, they are found in the 
cases of Texas and California, each of which 
was organized and admitted, object to the same 
alleged irregularities. 

The majority of the Committee on Territories, 
in behalf of the President, interpose one further 
objection, by tracing this new State organization 
to the influence of a secret, armed, political soci-j 
ety. Secrecy and combination, with extra-judi- 
cial oaths and armed power, were the enginery ' 
of the Missouri borderers in effecting the subju- [ 
gation of the people of Kansas, as that machinery 1 
IS always employed in the commission of politi-l 
cal crimes. How far it was lawful or morally 
right for the people of Kansas to employ the | 
same agencies for the defense of their lives and i 
liberties, may be a question for casuists, but cer-! 
tainly is not one for me. 1 can freely confess, I 
however, my deep regret that secret societies for j 
any purpose whatsoever have obtained a place. 
among political organizations within the Repub- 
lic; and it is my hope that the experience which 
we have now so distinctly had, that they can be 
but too easily adapted to unlawful, seditious, and 
dangerous enterprises, while they bring down 
suspicion and censure on high and noble causes j 
when identified with them, may be sufhcient to 
induce a general discontinuance of them. i 

Will the Senate hesitate for an hour between j 
the alternatives before them? The passions of | 
the American people find healthful exercise in { 
peaceful colonizations, and the construction of j 
railroads, and the building up and multiplying of I 
republican institutions. The Territory of Kansas I 
lies across the path through which railroads must j 
be built, and along which such institutions must| 
be founded, without delay, in order to preserve j 
the integrity of our empire. Shall we suppress j 
enterprises so benevolent and so healthful, and j 
inflame our country with that fever of intestine ! 
War which exhausts and consumes not more the 1 
wealth and strength than the virtue and freedom i 
of a nation? Shall we confess that the procla- 
mation of popular sovereignty within the Terri- 
tory of Kansas was not merely a failure, but was 
a pretense and a fraud? Or will Senators now 
contend that the people of Kansas, destitute as 
they are of a Legislature of their own, of execu- 
tive authorities of their own, of judicial authori- 
ties of their own, of a militia of their own, of 
revenues of their own subject to disposal by | 
themselves; practically deprived, as they are, of 
the rights of voting, serving as jurors, and of 
writing, printing, and speaking their own opin- 
ions, are nevertheless in the enjoyment and exer- 
cise of popular sovereignly? Shall we confess 
before the world, after so brief a trial, that this 
great political system of ours is inadequate either 
to enable the majority to control through the 
operation of opinion, without force, or to give 
•security to the citizen against tyranny and do- 
mestic violence? Are we prepared so soon to 
relinquish our simple and beautiful systems of j 
republican government, and to substitute in their 
place the machinery of usurpation and depotism ? I 



The Congress of the United States can refuse 
admission to Kansas only on the ground th.at it 
will not relinquish the hope of carrying African 
slavery into that new Territory. If you are pre- 
pared to assume that ground, why not do it man- 
fully and consistently, and establish slavery there 
by a direct and explicit act of Congress ? But have 
we come to that stage of demoralization and 
degeneracy so soon? — we, who commenced our 
political existence and gained the sympathies of 
the world by proclaiming to other nations that 
we held " these truths to be self-evident: that all 
men are created equal, and have certain inalien- 
able rights; and that among these rights are 
lite, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness;" we 
who, in the spirit of that declaration, have as- 
sumed to teach and to illustrate, for the benefit 
of mankind, a higher and better civilization than 
they have hitherto known ! If the Congress of 
the United States shall persist in this attempt, 
then they shall at least allow me to predict its 
results: Either you will not establish African 
slavery in Kansas, or you will do it at the cost 
of the sacrifice of all the existing liberties of 
the American people. Even if slavery were, 
what it is not, a boon to the people of Kansas, 
they would reject it if enforced upon their accept- 
ance by Federal bayonets. The attempt is in 
conflict with all the tendencies of the age. Afri- 
can slavery has, for the last fifty years, been giving 
way, as well in this country as in the islands 
and on the main land throughout this hemisphere. 
The jjolitical power and prestige of slavery in 
the United States are passing away. The slave 
States practically governed the Union directly for 
fifty years. They govern it now, only indirectly, 
through the agency of northern hands, tempo- 
rarily enlisted in their support. So much, owing 
to the decline of their power, they have already 
conceded to the free States. The next step, if 
they persist in their present course, will be the 
resumption and exercise by the free States of the 
control of the Government, without such conces- 
sions as they have hitherto made to obtain it. 
Throughout a period of nearly twenty years, the 
defenders of slavery screened it from discussion 
in the national councils. Now, they practically 
confess to the necessity for defending it here, by 
initiating discussion themselves. 'I'hey have at 
once thrown away their most successful weapon, 
compromise, and worn out that one which was 
next in effectiveness, threats of secession from 
the Union. It is under such unpropitious cir- 
cumstances that they begin the new experiment 
of extending slavery into free territory by force, 
the armed power of the Federal Government. 
You will need many votes from free States in the 
House of Representatives, and even some votes 
from those States in this House, to send an army 
with a retinue of slaves in its train into Kansas 
Have you counted up your votes in the two 
Houses? Have you calculated how long those 
who shall cast such votes will retain their places 
in the National Legislature ? 

But I will grant, for the sake of the argument, 
that with Federal battalions you can carry sla- 
very into Kansas, and maintain it there. Arc 
you quite confident that this republican form of 
government can then be upheld and preserved ? 
You will then yourselves have introduced the 
Trojan horse. No republican government ever 



15 



has endured, with standing armies maintained in 
its bosom to enforce submission to its hiws. A 
people who have once learned to relinquish their 
rights under compulsion, will not be long in for- 
getting that they ever had any. In extending 
slavery into Kansas, therefore, by arms, you will 
subvert the liberties of the people. 

Senators of the free States,! appeal to you. 
Believe ye the prophets? I know you do. You 
know, then, that slavery neither works mines and 
quarries, nor founds cities, nor builds ships, nor 
levies armies, nor mans navies. Why, then, will 
you insist on closing up this new Territory of 
Kansas against all enriching streams of immigra- 
tion, while you pour into it the turbid and poison- 
ous waters of African slavery ^ Which one of 
you all, whether of Connecticut, or of Pennsyl- 
vania, or of Illinois, or of Michigan, would con- 
sent thus to extinguish the chief light of civiliza- 
tion within the State in which your own fortunes 
are cast, and in which your own posterity arc to 
live } Why will you pursue a policy so univind, 
so ungenerous, and so unjust towards tlie help- 
less, defenseless, struggling Territory of Kansas, 
inhabited as it is by your own brethren, depend- 
ing on you for protection and safety ? Will 
slavery in Kansas add to the wealth or power 
of your own States, or to the wealth, power, or 
glory of the Republic ? You know that it will di- 
minish all of these. You profess a desire to end this 
national debate about slavery, which has become 
for you intolerable. Is it not time to relinquish 
that hope ? You have exhausted the virtue, for 
that purpose, that resided in compacts and plat- 
forms, in the suppression of the right of petition 
and in arbitrary parliamentary laws, and in ab- 
negation of Federal authority over the subject of 
slavery within the national Territories. Will 
you even then end the debate, by binding Kan- 
sas with chains, for the safety of slavery in 
Missouri ? Even then you must give over Utah 
to slavery, to make it secure and permanent in 
Kansas; and you must give over Oregon and 
Washington to both polygamy and slavery, so 
as to guaranty equally the one and the other of 
those peculiar domestic institutions in Utah; and 
so you must go on, sacrificing, on the shrine of 
peace, Territory after Territory, until the prevail- 
ing nationality of freedom and of virtue shall be 
lost, and the vicious anomalies, which you have 
hitherto vainly hoped Almighty wisdom would re- 
move from among you without yoiu" own concur- 
rence, shall become the controlling elements in the 
Republic. He who found a river in his path, and j 
sat down to wait for the flood to pass away, was 
not more unwise than he who expects the agita- 
tion of slavery to cease, while the love of freedom 
animates the bosoms of mankind. 



The solemnity of the occasion draws over our 
heads that cloud of disunion which always arises 
whe<never the subject of slavery is agitated. Still" 
the debate goes on, more ardently, earnestly, and 
angrily, than ever before. It employs now not 
merely logic, reproach, menace, retort, and defi- 
ance, but sabers, rifles, and cannon. Do you look 
through this incipient war quite to the end, and ' 
see tlirn' peacc^ quiet, and harmony, on the sub- 
ject of slavery ? If so, pray enlighten me, and 
show me how long the way is which leads to that 
repose. The free States are loyal, and they al- 
ways \:ill remain so. Their foothold on this con- 
tinent is firm and sure. Their ability t,o maintain 
themselves, unaided, under the present Constitu- 
tion, is established. The slave States, also, have 
been loyal hitherto, and I hope and trust they 
ever may remain so. But if disunion could ever 
come, it would come in the form of a secession 
of the slaveholding States; and it would come, 
then, when the slaveholding power, which is al- 
ready firmly established on the Gulf of Mexico, 
and extends a thousand miles northward along 
both banks of the Mississippi, should have fast- 
ened its grappling irons upon the fountains of 
the Missouri and the slopes of the Rocky 
Mountains. Then that power would either be 
intolerably supreme in this Republic, or it would 
strike for independence or exclusive domina- 
tion. Then the free States and slave States of 
the Atlantic, divided land warring with each other, 
would disgust the free States of the Pacific, and 
they would have abundant cause and justification 
for withdrawing from a Union productive no 
longer of peace, safety, and liberty to themselves, 
and no longer holding up the cherished hopes of 
mankind. 

Mr. President, the Continental Congress of 
1787, on resigning the trust, which it had dis- 
charged with signal fidelity, into the hands of the 
authorities elected under the new Constitution, 
and in taking leave of their constituents, ad- 
dressed to the people of tiie United States this 
memorable injunction : " Let it never be forgotten, 
that the cause of the United States has always 
been the cause of human nature." Let us recall 
that precious monition; let us examine the ways 
which we have pursued hitherto, under the light 
thrown upon them by that instruction. We shall 
find, in doing so, that we have forgotten moral 
right in the pursuit of material greatness, and 
we shall cease henceforth from practicing upon 
ourselves the miserable delusion, that we can 
safely extend empire, when we shall have become 
reckless of the obligations of EternalJustice, and 
faithless to the interests of universal freedom. 



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